Aussies’ Favorite Brands

… From Google to Vegemite

Australians Google any and everything. They’re glued to their Nokias, chuck a chicken on the barbie, indulge with Tim Tams and everyone has the hots for Hugh. Breast cancer has the strongest pull on their heartstrings, while Apple and Wii keep Australians constantly amused.

These are among the top brands in Australia according to the 2009 Brand Asset Valuator (BAV), a study conducted by George Patterson Y&R every three years. The latest BAV study examined 1,200 brands covering 139 different categories. More than 4,000 Australian consumers were surveyed online as part the WPP agency’s database of consumer perceptions of brands.

Google Lures Local Advertisers

by Subverting Its Own Search Policies

Google is experimenting with its deepest foray into local advertising and along the way is branching out from one of its most cherished philosophies of search advertising: the keyword auction.

In a bid to get more local advertisers to buy search ads, starting this week Google is trying out a new type of search ad and pricing system in the San Francisco and San Diego markets.

Rather than ask businesses to set up a campaign and bid for keywords, they’re offering local advertisers (or non-advertisers) a search ad for a flat fee. The fee is set by Google and based on the average that similar businesses are paying for a given keyword in that market.

Ad Recession Takes Bite Out of Google Revenue

But First-Quarter Total of $5.51 Billion Was Up 6% Year Over Year
by Abbey Klaassen

The recession has hit Google, handing the company its first quarter-over-quarter decline in ad revenue, as marketers cut their search-advertising budgets after the holiday season. But while its first-quarter revenue of $5.51 billion was down 3% compared with the fourth quarter, it was up 6% year over year.

And the slowdown in ads didn’t hurt the company’s profitability: Google reported net income of $1.42 billion, or $4.49 a share, in the first quarter, up 8.9% from the same period a year ago.

Google’s Tim Armstrong Departs for AOL

Time Warner cleaned out the executive suite at troubled internet unit AOL, appointing Google President-Americas Operations Tim Armstrong chairman-CEO.

Mr. Armstrong replaces former NBC Universal exec Randy Falco, who was named CEO of AOL in 2006. Also ousted was Mr. Falco’s deputy, Chief Operating Officer Ron Grant, a longtime Time Warner executive who once served as deputy to Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes.

In a statement, Mr. Bewkes said Mr. Armstrong is the right executive to “move AOL into the next phase of its evolution.”

“At Google, Armstrong helped build one of the most successful media teams in the history of the internet, helping to make Google the most popular online search-advertising platform in the world for direct and brand marketers,” Mr. Bewkes said.

Wanted to be a CEO
As an early Google employee who opened the company’s Mountain View, Calif., office in 2000, Mr. Armstrong doesn’t need the money, but he was known to want to become a CEO, and his name surfaced for other big internet jobs, such as when Yahoo searched for a replacement for former CEO Jerry Yang.

Twitter

- We Can Do What Google Can’t

Twitter sees lucrative opportunities in search, albeit a different kind of search than what Google offers, and, as co-founder Biz Stone told Ad Age recently, “we’ll certainly be exploring those.”

It’s because of the potential it sees in search that the Twitter co-founders walked away from a $500 million offer from Facebook — not just the terms of the deal, said Todd Chaffee, an Institutional Venture Partners general partner and a new Twitter backer. He said contrary to some reports, Facebook offered not just stock but substantial cash in the deal.

Twitter’s search engine, purchased with the acquisition of Summize last summer, bills itself as a search of “what’s happening — right now,” and in Twitter’s small but growing world, it is.

Cites a Likely Legal Battle and Tension With

Ad Partners as Reasons for Dropping Out (Google)

Google has opted out of its search deal with Yahoo, according to a company blog entry posted yesterday morning. It blamed regulator and advertiser concerns about the agreement and said that going through with the deal could have resulted in a protracted legal battle and damage to its relationships with partners.

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Google’s G1 Is Finally Ready for Its Close-up

With Much at Stake T-Mobile, Publicis Break Consumer Effort Behind Buzzed-About Smart Phone

SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) — Up until now, the buzz for the T-Mobile’s Google-branded smart phone has been mainly in the press and blogosphere. Starting with a campaign breaking today, the carrier has to convince consumers.

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McCain Is a Ford, Obama Is a BMW Brand Study: Voters Find Both Candidates Resemble Starbucks

Campaign Trail

Barack Obama is James Bond and John McCain is Jack Bauer. While that might make a great tagline for a rocking action-movie spoof, that sentence has nothing to do with a movie and everything to do with the way American voters view the presidential candidates.

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Time Is Money: Wealthy Drop Dollars Online

Google Study Finds Millionaires Prefer Efficiency of Web Shopping to Bricks-and-Mortar Stores for Luxury Purchases

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — The internet is a shopping destination of choice for the rich — and the one most preferred by the very rich, according to a study from Google.

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Creativity and Procreation Don’t Have to Be Mutually Exclusive New Documentary on Women and Art Raises Issues That Have Also Plagued Our Industry

Commentary by Teressa Iezzi

Hands off your keyboard. Can you name five female artists?

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Google’s Upward March Continues — but for How Long?

Search Giant Reports 26% Increase in Quarterly Income, but Is Vague About Category’s Strength Going forward

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — The good news: Search is still a bright spot. The not-so-good news: There’s no clarity going forward. Search giant Google on Thursday indicated there’s still growth in the online ad space during a tough economy, notching a healthy third-quarter net income of $1.35 billion, up 26% from $1.07 billion during the year-ago period. But the company begged off any questions about what the outlook for search advertising could be.

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Microsoft, Once Again, Officially Not Interested in Yahoo Despite CEO Ballmer’s Continued Public Flirting

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — “Our position hasn’t changed. Microsoft has no interest in acquiring Yahoo; there are no discussions between the companies,” said a Microsoft spokesman in an e-mail. This latest statement, sent to Ad Age on Thursday, regarding the on-again, off-again courtship came just hours after Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told the audience at a Gartner conference in Orlando, Fla., that the deal still makes “economic sense.”

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Will Video Search Ads Be YouTube’s Money Mint?

Google’s Video-Sharing Site Is Racking Up as Many Queries as Yahoo

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Google is borrowing from its most successful money-minting product, search ads, to goose revenue on its video-sharing site YouTube. The move comes just as YouTube’s search traffic has passed that of the No. 2 search engine behind Google, Yahoo.com.

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Martin Cass Replaces Scott Sorokin as Carat U.S. President Will Remain on Media Agency’s P&G Business, Which He Led Globally

LAS VEGAS (AdAge.com) — Carat announced it has named Martin Cass president of the media agency’s U.S. operation. The former exec VP had been running Carat’s Procter & Gamble business globally, as well as serving as head of communications planning domestically.

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